March 2010 Blog Posts (21)

Kevin White and David Donnenfield, producers at Filmmakers Collaborative (www.filmmakerscollaborative.org), released their latest film in January entitled "A Simple Question—The Story of STRAW." STRAW, which stands for Students and Teachers Restoring a Watershed, brings classrooms of school children out on the land to restore degraded habitat on both private and public properties. The program started 17 years ago in a 4th grade class when a… Continue

A cool, damp morning at The Cabin Path, but our workshopers arrived a little after 9 AM. After a short meeting in the Gathering Room to discuss the Great Alphabet Hunt, we started off on the trails in search of LETTERS in NATURE! (pic above, reflection of curved stick forms the letter "C")…

I last posted about the treehouse we built for my daughter in the redwoods near our house. It's a lovely spot and, in addition to being a great place to relax beneath the trees, one of its bonuses is that, once you're in it, the surrounding forest opens up to you. Our family recently took a little walk through it, lured by the beauty of the shafts of sunlight that beamed through the tree branches and by the call of owls -- perhaps the same ones who spent part of last summer living in a tree… Continue

Reading something Richard Louv wrote recently inspired me to write the post from which this is excerpted.

Perseverance, discipline, responsibility and independence are learned skills. I will differentiate skills from knowledge in that knowledge can be contained in books whereas skills are learned only by doing and usually by trial and error. The process of acquiring skills is, I think, hugely important to the development of people. In the process of acquiring other skills, like playing… Continue

I am a naturalist at a family adventure and nature resort near Brevard North Carolina. I am converting the hay loft of our barn into a nature center and I am looking for granting/funding sources that would be interested in supporting the nature center's construction. Does anyone have any ideas? Check out our website at http://www.earthshinenature.com for more info on our nature programming. Thanks for any input you can offer. --Steve

Taking the idea of "nearby nature" to heart, and wanting to honor our teenage daughter's desire to spend more time in it, we recently built a treehouse nestled in the redwood trees by our house. Anna had long enjoyed a special stand of Cathedral Redwoods, which get their name by growing in a circle around a host stump or tree. This circle has about half a dozen trees, each about 150 feet tall.…

“When people connect with nature, it happens somewhere. Almost everyone who cares deeply about the outdoors can identify a particular place where contact occurred. This may have been a wilderness, a national park, or a stretch of unbounded countryside, but more often the place that makes a difference is unspectacular: a vacant lot, a scruffy patch of woods, a weedy field, a stream, a green ravine…

The Torontonians are embracing the concept of outdoor playgroups. Now there are 5 different outdoor playgroups run by different parents every week in different parks in Toronto following the motto –No bad weather, only bad clothing

I'm really excited to see my book get a bit of press time. It is in this months' edition of Alaska Airlines inflight magazine and Climbing and Mountain Gazette magazines. Even if people don't buy the book (and I hope they do!) at least they will see that folks can and do take little ones out on adventures at an early age--safely! Get 'em hooked before they crawl I say!

Thursday, I resumed workshops at The Cabin Path...including the Home School Workshop Thursdays. It's been a long winter. Late last fall, I lost my only sister to ovarian cancer. I stayed with her and her husband that last month when she went home under Hospice. I had cancelled all of my workshops...my busiest time with Native American units, and pioneer days at the log cabin. I also cancelled the Thanksgiving Cabin…

Hi everyone! Here is part of my most recent post from my blog Let's Connect With Nature!It's a little longer post with links and pictures...the entire post can be found here. Hope you enjoy! As always, comments are welcome and… Continue